


Constellations

by rosequartzstars



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Back Painting, Constellations, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Oneshot, Painting, Shirtless Ron, Slice of Life, and hermione loves it, bedroom fluff, brief nonconsequential mention of sexual interaction near the beginning, rff 2020, romione, romione fic fest 2020, romione oneshot, ron's freckles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:01:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25205881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosequartzstars/pseuds/rosequartzstars
Summary: Hermione’s obsessed with the freckles that dot Ron’s back: she can’t help but stare every time he’s shirtless around her. But when she realizes they’re a bit like constellations, she has an idea— an idea that involves Ron laying flat on his stomach on their bedroom floor, and that involves her handling paint and paintbrushes to bring a galaxy to life on his back.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34





	Constellations

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Romione Ficlet Fest 2020 on Tumblr, for the prompt "rings". 
> 
> You can find the original here: https://romioneficfest.tumblr.com/post/621541445552242688/constellations

Hermione is accustomed to seeing Ron's bare back. That's the ins and outs of couple life: she's seen it in settings as intimate as in a shroud of sheets, his bare skin against hers after they've made love, and she's seen it in settings as innocent as when he pulls off a sweater and his shirt rides up with it. It's just a part of getting to know his body, but no matter how many times he's caught glimpses of his back, she's still transfixed by it. It's strong, rippled with muscles (a collateral benefit of how physically demanding it is to be an Auror, no doubt), the skin soft and supple, a faded scar right under his shoulderblade from when he fell off Charlie's broom when he was six, and an ocean of freckles splayed across every square inch of his pale white skin. It's always the freckles that get her— she's always trying to pick patterns in them, discern an order for them, pinpoint specific ones to single out as her favorites. It's like they're stars, and she's always trying to arrange them into constellations.

That's what gives her the idea.

"I still don't know what we're doing," grumbles Ron, laying shirtless on his stomach on a frayed old towel on the wooden floor of their bedroom.

"You'll see soon," says Hermione, who's straddled him to sit comfortably, making sure not to hurt him, atop the small of his back, where his butt begins. She has an assortment of paint jars next to her, standing to attention like colorful soldiers, as well as an array of paintbrushes of different thicknesses and a small plastic container filled halfway with water, sitting on a paper towel. Luna lent her the paint— she was elated when Hermione told her what she was planning.

"I don't like this," he keeps complaining, nestling his chin more comfortably into his folded arms, still refusing to lay down wholly. Hermione dips a thick paintbrush into a jar of deep purple, tapping it lightly against the mouth of the jar to cast off any excess. "I don't like this one bi—"

Ron's complaint dissolves into a pleasurable sigh as Hermione strokes the paintbrush across his back. It feels _good_ : the coolness of fresh paint, overlaid over the soothing caress of the paintbrush's bristles, makes for a sensation his skin can't help but cry for. "Merlin, Hermione, that's good," he groans contentedly, nestling his head into his arms like a pillow, finally allowing himself to relax fully.

"When am I ever wrong?" Hermione quips back, now laying a stroke of ocean blue against the violet already on his back. Ron wants to make a witty retort, but he's too overwhelmed by the feel of the brush against his skin, so he decides to let it slide just so she won't stop doing whatever's making him feel so good.

Hermione works as diligently as she does in anything: even knowing there's nothing at stake, she's too much of a perfectionist to allow anything to slack. The familiar crease of concentration appears between her eyebrows, and her tongue sticks out a bit from the corner of her mouth, an adorable display of how much focus she's devoting to this. Despite having never _seriously_ painted before (she's never been the artist, and when she was smaller she refused to do anything she wasn't immediately stellar at), she pays attention to every single detail as she would to the last gram of a potion's ingredients, her hand as steady and masterful as when tracing out delicate runes on parchment paper. The paintbrushes dip in and out of the paint jars —magenta, lilac, sky-blue, navy, mauve— and leave streaks across Ron's back in their wake, blending naturally as they mix on his skin.

"What is it you're painting?" Ron pipes up all of a sudden, his voice slurred with a mix of sleepiness and bliss, just as Hermione begins tracing a circular outline in ochre, with a thinner brush.

"I'm taking inspiration from Astronomy," Hermione says, pleased at how perfect her freehand circumference has turned out.

"Leave it to you, Hermione Granger, to draw a bloody _star map_ on my back and call it art."

"It's not a _star map_ ," Hermione says defensively, beginning to fill in the circle with more ochre paint. "It's a galaxy."

"Never got around to seeing too many of those," mumbles Ron, his eyes closed. "But I suppose when your Transfiguration teacher takes four Stunning shots to the chest on the night of your OWL, there's a good reason why you don't end up doing the NEWT."

Hermione laughs shortly, delightfully, and Ron smiles to himself as he nestles further into his arms, a tuft of hair falling across his forehead.

She finishes filling in the planet she's outlined, in a nice shade of ochre, and she now dips the thinner paintbrush into a milky-yellow hue of paint to begin tracing the rings around the planet— she hadn't realized it, but she's unwittingly painted Saturn. The rings are her favorite part: she remembers when she was eight or so, and her parents gifted her a book about space for Christmas, and she spent hours poring over it trying to understand why some planets had rings. She doesn't remember much about it now —Astronomy took on a different character when she entered Hogwarts—, but she still feels a predilection for those planets with rings around them.

"When you said you were going to paint me," Ron says, distracting her from her memories, "I thought you meant you were going to draw a picture of me, not use me for a canvas."

"I'm full of surprises," she replies, filling in the rings with the same milky yellow and a few thin lines of greyish black.

When she's done with her galaxy, Ron's back is filled with color: blueish hues dance and mingle as the backdrop, with Saturn standing radiantly against it. But there's only one thing missing to make it a proper galaxy: stars.

The paint layer is thick enough to create a cohesive painting, but thin enough that she can still faintly make out Ron's freckles. She knows this is going to be the most painstaking part of this— but it's why she's doing it in the first place, isn't it?

She takes the thinnest brush she can find, dips it into the white paint, and carefully dots Ron's back with it, placing a "star" over every freckle she can make out. Ron seems to like that, because she feels his muscles lose even more tension, but she can't lose sight of her work: every freckle must be painted over, a star for each kiss she's ever wanted to press to each little spot.

When she's finally done, she looks at her work with satisfaction: it's a proper galaxy now, speckled with stars and perched majestically on Ron's back. She stands up, dusts off her hands, and places her hands on her hips to observe it from a different angle.

Ron stands up too, his hands awkwardly by his sides so as to not mess up the painting. "So? How's it look? Can I look at it now?"

"Not yet," Hermione says softly, lifting her wand from her nightstand. "It's not quite finished."

Wordlessly, she points the wand at his back and gives it a little tap, careful not to smudge any of the paint with it. The galaxy comes alive: Saturn revolves around its axis, the hues in the back conglomerate and dissipate like clouds, and the rings oscillate around the planet with a gravitational tilt. But best of all are the stars: they dance around Ron's back, arrange themselves into shapes and formations, they seem to play with one another as they shoot across his skin. It's as if Van Gogh's "Starry Night" had come alive, but so much better: it's a cosmic dance, a galactic performance for her eyes only, and it's everything she's ever imagined Ron's freckles to be. Finally, they've made the leap from mere stars to the constellations she's so often pictured.

"So?" comes Ron's voice again, with a hint of his trademark impatience. "How'd it turn out?"

Hermione lets her gaze sweep up and down the body of the man she loves again. Every curvature of it, from the sturdiness of his thighs up to the strength of his back to the delicateness of his nape, crowned by a cascade of orange-red locks she loves to tangle her fingers in. _Merlin_ , she loves him.

Her answer comes without a trace of hesitation: "It's perfect."


End file.
